We all live with loss. We experience it personally and socially.The following 10 poems and stories all relate to ceramic sculptures in the Loss Series. For Loss Ceramic Gallery click here.Loss

Loss is a bright shard -It flies at you unexpectedtorn from an infinite darkDarkness that rocksbackand forthas far as you can remember...lined with breathing cliffswarm - softancientmaroonedred

Loss 1 - ShadowThe death of the family dog, Shadow, on a hot summer’s day pushed the first abstract image into clay and metal. Other images and experiences of loss then flooded into poetry and form. I tried to stay true to my feeling of loss as pieces torn away and disconnected.

Haipu

My dog and I walk See cow pie and butterfly Which one is beauty?

Loss 2 - Grandma Grandpa - The FarmI spent many glorious summers on my grandparents farm as a child. My grandpa wore overalls daily and when I sat on his lap I always heard the comforting sound of his pocket watch ticking. My grandma was a master gardener and was as beautiful as her flowers.

Loss 3 - Mom's Metamorphosis

I read In The Lettuce to my mother as she lay in a hospital bed with a tracheotomy, unable to speak...seemingly unaware. When I finished reading the poem she squeezed my hand. It was the last communication we ever had.

The day after she died my sister and I called each other up and we both said, “I just had the most amazing experience! I was standing in the backyard and a Swallowtail butterfly came and visited me and it felt like it was MOM!”

In The Lettuce

Life is motion… waves of motion. The rolling, swollen hills -- their ancient heaving history, the macrocosm mother of river rock and beach sand. Black holes, bending space, pulling moons, eggs, wriggling sperm… the rolling, swollen belly. The ocean swells fertile with looping worms, fish, and sensually whipping seaweed. The waves never stop. Always looking for an anchor, a container. Up and down, side to side, in and out. The meandering path of salamanders, sticky frog fingers and snaky meadow creeks broaden into verdant pools, swarming with egg sacs and pollywogs. The lizard’s scales inch against the granite and slither to a stop- waiting, listening, looking- devouring the moment, before a mammal leaps, eating the memory of itself.

Waves undulate in the seas, against the stream bed’s mud, eddy off the tongue toward the spiraling cochlea, radio, telephone, television, tell tale telemetry of telepathy, cast by the wind against fresh sailing sheets on the hill, where gravity plays with a child’s rubber ball. The coffee swirls with the cream. The steam curls out of the cup, the molecules waft past her swaying cilia, mixing with the breakfast berries,all riding their peristaltic wave. Her flowing hair turns against the curve of her neck, down her spine, arching and rolling as she reaches for the morning paper. Her brain waves remember, erotic undulations, a rolling country road, the inchworm in the lettuce she washed the night before. And somewhere by the licking flames of a campfire the design of his breath condenses into heat waves with every flicker of his pulse.Life is motion… waves of motion waking, wandering, to the next…

Loss 4 - Daddy "Tuolumne or Bust"

Two years after my mom’s death and the wonderful Swallowtail butterfly experience, my father “hit the trail” at 5am — his usual waking time to build a backpacking breakfast fire and watch the sun rise.

That same morning a Turkey Vulture skimmed past our windshield at close range. My sister and I whooped, “Whoa, was that dad?”

Some people value vultures as birds of peace because they never kill. My father did like to explore and sample a bit of everything. He was also powerfully peaceful.

When he died, he was holding a granite rock from Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite, with the knowledge that his ashes would be scattered there.

Loss 5 - Where are My...?

Glasses...Glasses...PresbyopiaWhere are my...Glasses.A pair in every roombut where are my...